Kevin Kelly, one of the co-founders of Wired has embarked on what some would call an odd project for the futurist. Known for inspiring The Matrixseries as well as helping to create the world that was shown in the Tom Cruise hit Minority Report, Kelly decided to turn his attention to a medium that has been gaining in popularity recently, especially with all the major motion pictures being made to introduce it to a wider audience. Of course, the medium being mentioned here is the graphic novel, in which narrative is communicated through imagery and epic inner monologues that convey the human (and sometimes superhuman) condition.

Called The Silver Cord, Kelly and a group of artist and writers have spent the past seven years completing the story which is set to be told over a series of books. What’s interesting is that Kelly and his team are using Kickstarter to sell the second book in the series, with the first 210-page novel available for free on the Silver Cord website. This marks one of the first times that we have a seen a Kickstarter for a finished product, making us curious to see if it can get fully funded.

Kelly is classifying The Silver Cord as a techno-epic, although he also admits that people could put it in the genre of spiritual fiction. The backstory of the series has an interesting premise, a war is brewing between a technologically advanced human race and the millions of angels who live in the non-tangible world. In the middle of it all is a young woman who is considered a “half-breed” and is unknowingly the savior of the human race. Because humanity has evolved technologically to the point where it can manipulate the world that the angels reside in, several factions of the “heavenly” creatures have become threatened and want to end the possibility of a takeover.

If the premise of the novels aren’t enough to entice you to support the Kickstarter project, perhaps the all-star list of artists that worked on the books will. Kelly seems to have gathered the best of the best for this series, which is no small feat. Included the credits for creating The Silver Cord are people like Kiel Murray and Phil Lorin who were screenwriters for the Pixar film Cars, as well as Tim Naylor who is the technical director at Industrial Light and Magic for films like Star Wars (episodes two and three) and The Transformers. These are just a few of the fifteen individuals credited for the work that has taken place on this graphic novel project.

Kelly has made backing this Kickstarter project very reasonable. For as little as $10 you can have your name listed in the book as a supporter with a donation of $35 getting you the actual physical novel. Of course with any Kickstarter campaign the tiers skyrocket into the thousands of dollars with some awesome rewards, but if you’re like any other comic book geek in the world, just getting your hands on the story is going to be enough.